UAB Palliative Care needs community support for LIVESTRONG grants

UAB’s Center for Palliative Care is in an online battle with other hospitals for cancer grants from Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG organization.

Your vote can help two University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Palliative and Supportive Care programs receive funding from LIVESTRONG’s Community Impact Project. UAB has applied for grant funding from LIVESTRONG for an artists-in-residence program for cancer patients and for certification of advanced palliative care status from the Joint Commission. The two programs are competing with hundreds of other hospitals, cancer centers and community organizations.

If successful, UAB’s palliative care program would partner with the Creative Center’s Hospital Artists in-Residence Program, which works bedside and in small group settings with men, women and children in oncology units, bone-marrow-transplant units, intensive care/respiratory units, hospice and palliative care programs. The program offers its patients the opportunity to learn about and become absorbed in their own creative resources as they meet the challenges of diagnosis, treatment and survivorship.

The second grant would fund center efforts to gain Palliative Care Advanced Certification from the Joint Commission. This certification is for hospitals wishing recognition for providing state-of-the-art palliative care services to patients and families throughout the continuum of a serious illness. This initiative seeks 20 hospital-affiliated cancer centers wishing to achieve the new Joint Commission certification.

LIVESTRONG was created in 1997 by world-class cyclist Lance Armstrong after his diagnosis of cancer. The organization works to empower the cancer community to address the unmet needs of cancer survivors through collaboration, knowledge-sharing and partnership.

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